UAE: Is menopause forcing women out of the workplace?

Khaleej Times

18-07-2025

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Dubai-based women's health educator and menopause coach Sharon James once worked with a client who was fired from her job as a flight attendant soon after she began experiencing symptoms of menopause, like weight gain and low energy. 'The airline company picked up on it and her supervisors sent her off for an assessment,' she says. Their verdict? 'It was all in her head,' says James. 'They grounded her until she lost weight.' Expecting a menopausal woman, whose body undergoes tremendous hormonal changes, to lose weight is​ almost like expecting a toddler to quote Shakespeare: it's both unreasonable and illogical.
After a​ second ​assessment,​ this time one that gauged her mental health, she was prescribed what many women would agree is society's go-to solution for all 'mysterious' ailments that befall the female sex: antidepressants. 'But she was low, obviously, because they had grounded her,' says James, who is also the co-founder of the ​GCC Menopause Summit, which debuted​ in Dubai last year. 'And eventually, they fired her because she wasn't 'meeting the criteria'.' When the client returned to her home country, James says, she was diagnosed with severe perimenopause.
This isn't a one-off case. According to research by health insurance company British United Provident Association Limited (BUPA) and the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), 'almost a million women (in the UK) have left their job because of menopausal symptoms' and 'around one in six people (17 per cent) have considered leaving work due to a lack of support in relation to their menopause symptoms'. And it doesn't help that words like 'menopausal' are still used as ​discriminatory insults against older women, reinforcing the stigma around a topic that ​still remains largely taboo.
Closer home, Donna Howarth, founder and CEO of Middle East Menopause Organisation (MEMO), says women in the UAE face a 'unique blend of cultural, professional, and personal challenges when navigating menopause at work.'
'The biggest issues include silence and stigma, lack of workplace policies, fear of being judged or seen as weak, limited access to knowledgeable healthcare [professionals], and a diverse workforce with limited cultural understanding,' she says, adding, 'With employees from across the Arab world, South Asia and the West, there's no one-size-fits-all experience, and unfortunately, that often results in little to no open discussion.'
When we speak, the organisation is a day away from launching a UAE-based survey 'to understand how menopause is experienced at work across different sectors and nationalities' as a part of the initiative 'MEMO in the Workplace'. The target, says Howarth, is to get at least 500 responses over the next few months by sharing the survey through 'MEMO's networks, social media, and select organisational partners'.
'And from our ongoing conversations and the data gathered through our survey, it's becoming increasingly clear that women taking a step back from work, either temporarily or permanently, is not uncommon,' she explains. Tragically, women either reduce their work hours, step down from leadership roles, or switch to less demanding roles — those particularly in their late 40s or early 50s, who might be juggling a career and a caregiving role at home, end up leaving the workforce altogether. 'And what is striking is that many of these decisions could be prevented if there were more workplace flexibility, awareness, and support in place,' she says, adding that they are developing a 'MEMO-certified corporate workshop series and employer tool kits to help HR teams and leadership create menopause-inclusive environments'.
Small step, giant leap
A clutch of companies is, however, changing the status quo by launching a host of activities and initiatives like​ educational webinars, publishing informative intranet content, organising wellness summits, and granting leave to support female employees as they transition into menopause. James points out that such companies usually have a global presence with head offices in the UK, the US or other countries where such policies are already in place. 'They were already advocating it there and, therefore, want their Middle East branch to jump onboard and get educated as well,' explains James, who has ​conducted around 50 workshops​ for corporates.
​​Earlier this year, global quality assurance and risk management company DNV, which is headquartered in Oslo, Norway, formed a 'Menopause Hub'. It's a global project, explains Fizza Sabir, regional people and culture advisor, with colleagues from Norway and elsewhere in the world working and rolling it out in their branch offices across the globe.
Sabir, who attended the 'eye-opening' GCC Menopause Summit last year, says that she has personally witnessed the physical, mental, and emotional toll that menopause has taken on her colleagues. 'We have also had a few male line managers approach us saying, 'I don't know what to do. A few members of my team are going through menopause and one day they are happy, but the next day they are upset. What can we do for them?''
The company publishes a comprehensive intranet support guide packed with information, advice, and statistics on menopause and has hosted global webinars by experts on topics like hormonal health and menopause, and its impact on women's health and productivity. And later this year, the company plans to organise a well-being summit for ​its employees and hold discussions on several topics, including menopause.
Unlike mental health, menopause remains a relatively new area of focus that many HR departments are yet to fully grasp. But happy employees build successful companies and with ​experienced senior female employees either leaving or using their insurance excessively, Sabir points out that it would help to 'demonstrate how it may cost you as an organisation if you don't address th​is.'
'I think this is what we still need to work on, by gathering data,' she adds.
Since March 2023, communications and PR firm TishTash Communications has offered ​flexible, unrestricted paid leave to its all-female staff for their health-related needs, including menopause. Natasha Hatherall, founder and CEO of TishTash Communications, struggled with perimenopause herself. 'Nothing prepared me for this phase of life,' she says. 'I didn't feel like myself, I struggled health-wise and to do the things that once came so easily to me.' As someone who has been running a business for 13 years, she also knew how it could compel women to 'leave the workforce if they did not have support here, and how we could lose amazing talent in the workforce.'
Healthcare platform Nabta Health has a host of such initiatives in place for its staff. For starters, it offers a 'women's career and leadership support programme' (which includes mentorship and flexible working options) to 'ensure that career progression doesn't stall during biologically or emotionally demanding phases of a woman's life, including during perimenopause or menopause,' explains founder and CEO Sophie Smith.
It has a menstrual leave policy that allows employees to take one day of paid leave per month for menstrual health issues including perimenopause or menopause and, as Smith points out, offers employees a comprehensive annual health check through its NABTA Premium Subscription, provided free of charge to the team. 'It's tailored to the age, stage, and goals of each woman,' she elaborates. 'For women going through perimenopause or menopause, this includes symptom tracking, lifestyle and clinical support including access to Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT), and personalised mental and nutritional health advice.'
A long road ahead
However, such companies remain in the minority. Every time James uploads a social media post asking women to share the challenges of dealing with menopause at work, she is flooded with replies by women who feel like they've lost the ability to speak confidently ​at meetings or deliver a flawless presentation. 'They can no longer remember the information when just a few months or a year ago, they could stand up and rock it. I remember there was a phase where my PowerPoints went from having a couple of words to having full sentences because I couldn't remember what I wanted to talk about.'
'And that's why,' continues James, 'this year at the summit, we are really focusing on careers and the workplace, and putting up a ​'career ​clinic' where women can come in and have discussions with professionals about anything, like CV writing, which could help them navigate their careers and get back into the workforce.'
Experts and women also emphasise that companies must recognise the different ways in which women experience menopause and its wide range of symptoms.
Dubai resident Sara Beattie was in her 40s, working as a school teacher in Hong Kong, when the first symptoms of menopause hit her like a mack truck. 'I had developed an irrational fear of driving — I was literally flinching at cars on the road as they came at me,' says the positive psychology practitioner and menopause coach. Driving anxiety is widely recognised as a symptom of menopause today but back then, Beattie thought that she was 'just going mad'. 'I was also getting monthly headaches and ridiculous dizziness, which was compounded by a lack of sleep.'
The symptoms worsened when she turned 50, and had begun to affect her much-cherished job as a teacher in the UK. 'I was forgetting people's names and having delays in my conversations. There was a horrific day when I was teaching maths on the whiteboard and I totally forgot how to do it, even though it was written in front of me,' says Beattie who was also, at one point, prescribed anti-depressants by her doctor. And once while speaking with a student's parents at a meeting, she realised she was talking about the wrong child.
Her own experience with menopause, and the shocking lack of information, propelled her to launch two projects. The first one in 2021, titled 'From Isolation to Agency', looked at self-compassion in perimenopausal women between the ages of 40 and 55 from across the world. And in her most recent project titled 'The Age of Renewal', she encouraged women to 'share their experiences (of menopause) in any way that makes sense to them' and received works of art like Lego, collages, nail art, ceramics, paintings and poetry from 27 women in countries like the UAE, Denmark, Belgium and the UK.
'In both projects, there was a common theme of misdiagnosis,' she says, talking about the women's responses. 'And lack of sleep was a huge one, which impacted everything, including their performance at work,' says Beattie, who was involved in the wellbeing programming at COP28, where 'there was growing interest in how team leaders can better understand and support colleagues experiencing menopause.'
Companies need to go beyond implementing cosmetic changes that have little impact on their employees — like adding extra fans for hot flashes — as a tick-box exercise. For instance, being seated a few steps away from the washroom might help a woman working a desk job, but not a teacher who can't ​ walk out of her classroom —she might, instead, prefer having a quiet space for a few minutes away from noisy children. Others could benefit from having hybrid work models, flexible work timings, comfortable uniforms made out of breathable fabric, or even something seemingly small like supportive colleagues who are not in a hurry to fill one's brain fog-induced pauses in conversations.
Menopause is a part of ageing and companies and recruiters shouldn't approach it as a​problem​ to be dealt with, say experts. 'It's about developing the culture and, of course, cultural change in an organisation takes time,' says Beattie.